Ajanta

[Read the last paragraph first, and then the entire article! -A]

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Why did Aurangzeb Demolish the Kashi Vishvanath?
By Koenraad Elst

During the Ayodhya controversy, there were occasional statements in the
Hindutva camp confirming (VHP) or denying (BJP) that apart from Ram
Janmabhoomi, two other sacred sites should also be ³liberated² from
Islamic ³occupation²: Krishna Janmabhoomi in Mathura and Kashi
Vishvanath in Varanasi. Though the Hindu business community in central
Varanasi has made it clear that it refuses to suffer the inevitable
losses which would accompany an agitation in their densely populated
neighbourhood, the liberation of Kashi Vishvanath is still on the VHP¹s
agenda. Therefore, some authors have tried to ³do an Ayodhya² on Kashi,
viz. try to make people believe that there never was a Hindu temple at
the disputed site.

Syed Shahabuddin asserts that Muslims cannot possibly have destroyed
any Hindu temple, because ³pulling down a place of worship to construct
a mosque is against the Shariat²; claims to the contrary are all
³chauvinist propaganda.² Arun Shourie has confronted this claim with
the information given in the official court chronicle, Maasiri
Alamgiri, which records numerous orders for and reports of destructions
of temples. Its entry for 2*September 1669 tells us: ³News came to
court that in accordance with the Emperor¹s command his officers had
demolished the temple of Vishvanath at Banaras² . Moreover, till today,
the old Kashi Vishvanath temple wall is visible as a part of the walls
of the Gyanvapi mosque which Aurangzeb had built at the site.

In the face of such direct testimony, it is wiser not to challenge
facts headon. It is better to minimize or to justify them. Thus,
Percival Spear, co-author (with Romila Thapar) of the prestigious
Penguin History of India, writes: ³Aurangzeb¹s supposed intolerance is
little more than a hostile legend based on isolated acts such as the
erection of a mosque on a temple site in Benares.² But a perusal of the
same Moghul chronicle thoroughly refutes this reassuring assertion:
Aurangzeb had thousands of temples destroyed. And other chronicles,
diaries and other documents concerning Muslim rulers in India prove
that the practice was not a personal idiosyncrasy of Aurangzeb¹s
either.

Therefore, a more promising way of defusing the conflict potential
which the mosque at the Kashi Vishvanath site carries, is to justify
the replacement of the temple with a mosque. Maybe the owners and users
of the temple had brought it on themselves? Maybe Islam can be
disentangled from this act of destruction in favour of a purely secular
motive?

JNU historian Prof. K.N. Panikkar offers one way out: ³the destruction
of the temple at Banaras also had political motives. It appears that a
nexus between the sufi rebels and the pandits of the temple existed and
it was primarily to smash this nexus that Aurangzeb ordered action
against the temple.² The eminent historian quotes no source for this
strange allegation. In those days, Pandits avoided to even talk with
Mlecchas, let alone to concoct intrigues with them.

Other secularists have spread a more sophisticated variation, now
regularly reproduced in the media: ³Did Muslim rulers destroy temples?
Some of them certainly did. Following the molestation of a local
princess by some priests in a temple at Benaras, Aurangzeb ordered the
total destruction of the temple and rebuilt it at a nearby site. And
this is the only temple he is believed to have destroyed.² This story
is now repeated ad nauseam, not only in the extremist Muslim press and
in the secularist press but also in academic platforms by ³eminent
historians². It is repeated with approval by historian Gargi
Chakravartty, who also reveals the source of this story.

She introduces the quotation as follows: ³Much has been said about
Aurangzeb¹s demolition order of Vishwanath temple at Banaras. But
documentary evidence gives a new dimension to the whole episode:² What
follows is the theory launched by B.N. Pande, working chairman of the
Gandhi Darshan Samiti and former Governor of Orissa:

³The story regarding demolition of Vishvanath temple is that while
Aurangzeb was passing near Varanasi on his way to Bengal, the Hindu
Rajas in his retinue requested that if the halt was made for a day,
their Ranis may go to Varanasi, have a dip in the Ganges and pay their
homage to Lord Vishwanath. Aurangzeb readily agreed. Army pickets were
posted on the five mile route to Varanasi. The Ranis made a journey on
the Palkis. They took their dip in the Ganges and went to the
Vishwanath temple to pay their homage. After offering Puja all the
Ranis returned except one, the Maharani of Kutch.

³A thorough search was made of the temple precincts but the Rani was to
be found nowhere. When Aurangzeb came to know of it, he was very much
enraged. He sent his senior officers to search for the Rani.
Ultimately, they found that the statue of Ganesh which was fixed in the
wall was a moveable one. When the statue was moved, they saw a flight
of stairs that led to the basement. To their horror, they found the
missing Rani dishonoured and crying, deprived of all her ornaments. The
basement was just beneath Lord Jagannath¹s seat. The Rajas expressed
their vociferous protests. As the crime was heinous, the Rajas demanded
exemplary action. Aurangzeb ordered that as the sacred precincts have
been despoiled, Lord Vishvanath may be moved to some other place, the
temple be razed to the ground and the Mahant be arrested and punished.²

The story is very bizarre, to say the least. First of all, it has
Aurangzeb go to Bengal. Yet, in the extant histories of his life and
works, no such journey to Bengal, or even any journey as far east as
Varanasi, is recorded. Some of his generals were sent on expeditions to
Bengal, but not Aurangzeb himself. There are fairly complete chronicles
of his doings, day by day; could B.N. Pande or any of his quoters give
the date or even the year of this remarkable episode?

Neither was Aurangzeb known to surround himself with Hindu courtiers.
And did these Rajas take their wives along on military expeditions? Or
was it some holiday picnic? How could the Mahant kidnap a Rani who was
there in the company of other Ranis, as well as the appropriate
courtiers and bodyguards? Why did he take such risk? Why did the
³Rajas² wait for Aurangzeb to take ³exemplary action²: did they fear
his anger if they punished the priests or destroyed the temple
themselves? And since when is demolition the approved method of
purifying a defiled temple, an eventuality for which the Shâstras have
laid down due ritual procedures?

One question which we can readily answer is, where did B.N. Pande get
this story from? He himself writes: ³Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya, in his
famous book, The Feathers and the Stones, has narrated this fact based
on documentary evidence. So, we have to go one more step back in time
to find this intriguing ³documentary evidence². Let us turn to this
book, now hard to find, to see what the documentary evidence is on
which this whole wave of pro-Aurangzeb rumours is based, but which no
one has cared to reproduce or even just specify. This is what Gandhian
Congress leader Pattabhi Sitaramayya wrote in his prison diary:

³There is a popular belief that Aurangazeb was a bigot in religion.
This, however, is combated by a certain school. His bigotry is
illustrated by one or two instances. The building of a mosque over the
site of the original Kasi Visveswara Temple is one such. A like mosque
in Mathura is another. The revival of Jazia is a third but of a
different order. A story is told in extenuation of the first event.

³In the height of his glory, Aurangazeb like any foreign king in a
country, had in his entourage a number of Hindu nobles. They all set
out one day to see the sacred temple of Benares. Amongst them was a
Ranee of Cutch. When the party returned after visiting the Temple, the
Ranee of Cutch was missing. They searched for her in and out, East,
North, West and South but no trace of her was noticeable. At last, a
more diligent search revealed a Tah Khana or an underground storey of
the temple which to all appearances had only two storeys. When the
passage to it was found barred, they broke open the doors and found
inside the pale shadow of the Ranee bereft of her jewellery.

³It turned out that the Mahants were in the habit of picking out
wealthy and bejewelled pilgrims and in guiding them to see the temple,
decoying them to the underground cellar and robbing them of their
jewellery. What exactly would have happened to their life one did not
know. Anyhow in this case, there was no time for mischief as the search
was diligent and prompt. On discovering the wickedness of the priests,
Aurangazeb declared that such a scene of robbery could not be the House
of God and ordered it to be forthwith demolished. And the ruins were
left there.

³But the Ranee who was thus saved insisted on a Musjid being built on
the ruined and to please her, one was subsequently built. That is how a
Musjid has come to exist by the side of the Kasi Visweswar temple which
is no temple in the real sense of the term but a humble cottage in
which the marble Siva Linga is housed. Nothing is known about the
Mathura Temple.

³This story of the Benares Musjid was given in a rare manuscript in
Lucknow which was in the possession of a respected Mulla who had read
it in the Ms. and who though he promised to look it up and give the Ms.
to a friend, to whom he had narrated the story, died without fulfilling
his promise. The story is little known and the prejudice, we are told,
against Aurangazeb persists.²

So now, we finally know where the story comes from: an unnamed mullah
friend of an unnamed acquaintance of Sitaram ayya¹s knew of a
manuscript, the details of which he took with him in his grave. This is
the ³document² on which secularist journalists and historians base
their ³evidence² of Aurangzeb¹s fair and secularist disposition,
overruling the evidence of archaeology and the cold print of the
Maasiri Alamgiri, to ³explode the myth² of Islamic iconoclasm spread by
the ³chauvinist² Hindutva propagandists. Now you just try to imagine
what the secularists and their mouthpieces in Western academe would say
if Hindus offered evidence of this quality.

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